The clarinet, 100's of them to be found on ebay, 2nd hand shops, charity shops, pawn brokers.

The question begs- is this the poor mans saxophone?


Discuss..............................

There's always one, isn't there...

You just don't expect that one to be a 35 year old teacher and band leader ....

There's always one, isn't there...

You just don't expect that one to be a 35 year old teacher and band leader ....
[/quote]

Lol where is your sense of humour woman? Any way i've been on the forum for a long time so most people should know how to take me by now. Hey check out these funky new ABRSM forum rules-


FORUMS RULES - A SNAPSHOT
- No abusive, offensive or aggressive postings
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Got to love that last one.

I arent a poor man I play both clarinet and saxophone

Neither is my 5 year old daughter.....i got her a Boosey & Hawkes Emperor Clarinet a few weeks ago for £20, she likes to play with it as a magic wand. (Bless)

Oh well - that'll do I suppose... until she can get a sax!

I have a very dry sense of humour. Perhaps you don't recognise mine any more than I recognise yours

I played clarinet at school, saxophone was never an option for me, not sure I even knew what one was when I started playing. When I started playing in the local schools concert band and I first got acquainted with them I wanted one. A lot. It wasn't really an option at the time though. When I eventually started earning money for myself (which was quite some time later given I spent 7 years as a student) I got a tax rebate in my first year and spent it on a really not very good tenor. I've never looked back. I have no desire at all to play clarinet anymore, although a bass clarinet might be quite nice.

However saxes are now actually quite cheap to purchase, no where as cheap as clarinets mind but much more accessible than when you and i were in our teens. I also got my little 5 year old one of those shiney red curved soprano saxes off Ebay and she loves it, its not a great sax but can produce the tempered scale. She had her first lesson last week and is very proud of the fact that she can produce the notes B and A. I wonder if we'll see more youngsters starting out on soprano sax rather than the conventional 'black stick'.

Don't you need your front teeth to play a woodwind instrument?

Anyway to answer your question My eldest wanted Sax but had to settle for Clarinet because of her size (she was quite small and light for her age), Soprano was never put in the frame as an option. She still plays Clari but has added Sax. I suspect Clari's often get sidelined due to problems with reeds, playing over the break etc and the cheap ones are very cheap compared to a cheap Sax. In some ways she finds her Sax easier to control than the Clari.

Aww cute

I'm afraid I play the clarinet as a poor (wo)man's sax: I wanted to learn sax, and couldn't afford one.

I got a sax before I got a clarinet! I bought my clarinet at a boot sale(I know what you're thinking - pile of junk) for £60! It's very good, but I still need to get round to getting some things fixed on it. My sax on the other hand was £300 but it was brand new!

Aren't they much harder to play than a saxophone? I don't play any woodwind (shame on me) but have heard that few people make it to the advanced stages of clarinet playing due to difficulties of fingering: hence the presence of so many of them in junk shops and on Ebay.

Poor man's sax? Never! What about Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Sidney Bechet et al - geniuses all of them.

Violinia

Clarinet is an amazing instrument!!!!!

As I play both clarinet and sax, the saxophone is easier to get a note out of to begin with, my friend and I both have to use ridiculously hard reeds on sax to stop the clarinet being such a shock! It is a large instrument, and as such some of the keys are more difficult to reach. The lower register on sax can be unstable (At least for me!) Whereas its more likely to be the clarion register on clarinet. I can't say that clarinet fingerings are more difficult than sax, although perhaps its the fact that it overblows at the 12th which confuses? Certainly my friend and I have been caught out by differing fingerings when moving from one instrument to another (We both play descant recorder too).

Both clari and sax have their tricky and less tricky aspects.

Though I play both, my first love is definitely the clarinet : I play more clarinet than anything else.

You all knew that anyway...

So on that note, I'll take leave of the thread!

Hiya Violini, i've not been on this forum for a while, just to correct you, whilst Sid (well thats what his mates called him) did and could play clarinet it was'nt what he is remembered for. He is recalled as the master of the soprano saxophone dropping the clarinet very early on in his career and switching to the sop in the early 1920's. The others you mention are quite correctly know as those people who play those 'long black wooden stick things'.

TC